Review: 'Don't Breathe 2' Suffocatingly Awful
The most unnecessary sequel of the year, the lazily titled "Don't Breathe 2" has moments of suspense, but fails in telling a smart or compelling story.
The problem with the sequel to the surprise hit "Don't Breathe" — a movie about a band of young thieves that try to rob a blind man (Stephen Lang), only to find he's a psycho — is that the villain of the original is now the "hero" of the sequel.
You heard me. And this isn't sci-fi, so he hasn't been reprogrammed like the Terminator. Nope, he's still the bad guy that got away with a lot of horrible things and is now illogically raising a twelve-year-old girl named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace).
Meanwhile, some thugs are going around town kidnapping people to steal their organs for black market sale. When Phoenix is spotted by one of these thugs, Raylan (Brendan Sexton III), he and his cronies go after her. But, of course, they need to deal with baddie Norman Nordstrom (Lang) and his ex-military antics.
"Don't Breathe 2" elicits some white-knuckle moments, but they are few and far between. It also amps up the ick factor with a number of injuries and killings that are gross just for the sake of being gross. All the while, we are following horrible thugs who are trying to wipe out a horrible monster we are supposed to be rooting for.
Sure, we want Norman to protect the kid, but we also know he's a gross creep, so who knows what he wants the kid for. Because, as much as Phoenix calls him dad, we will come to find out he has a secret — and so does Raylan.
It's at this point that "Don't Breathe 2" becomes so ludicrous that it elicited belly laughs from the audience. One ridiculous moment after another had the audience roaring, and any investment in the film began to loosen to the point of giving up.
By the end, you don't really care who lives or dies, or in what incredibly stupid ways the body count grows. (There's a wheelchair sequence that has to be seen to be believed.) A Darth VaderLuke Skywalker moment at the end doesn't justify us caring about Norman, either (they literally use a line and staging from "Return of the Jedi"), and the coda of the film is super predictable.
All in all, this is a pointless sequel to a far superior original. To keep this franchise going a new set of characters and a villain could have easily been swapped in, for a sort of "Don't Breathe" anthology series. Instead, we get a film that asks us to root for the bad guy, which is not the easiest thing to do.
"Don't Breathe?" Don't go.
"Don't Breathe 2" is available digitally today